How Often Do Shows Go From Off-Broadway to Broadway in Two Separate Productions?

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This time, the reader question was: How often do shows go from off-Broadway to Broadway in two separate productions?

This season, three plays are receiving Broadway debuts which already made significant noise off-Broadway in their original productions, years ago. 

Becky Shaw, Bug, and Marjorie Prime will all be opening on Broadway in early 2026 in brand new productions. The first and last are spending time on Broadway at the Hayes under the auspices of Second Stage while Bug is being presented by Manhattan Theatre Club at their home, the Friedman. 

This is the continuation of a growing trend on Broadway: bringing shows—more often plays than musicals—to the Main Stem for the first time years after they’ve already premiered in different productions off-Broadway. One reason for this is the fact that in this age of theatre, major playwrights often receive their start off-Broadway. After they have more mainstream success under their belt, their early work that premiered off-Broadway is seen as more viable for a Broadway audience; their plays are already tested and ticket buyers are familiar with their voice. Put another way, there are multiple non-profits these days that have both Broadway and off-Broadway arms, and which make an effort to use this structure to nurture playwrights and utilize off-Broadway as a springboard, even if the trajectory takes years.

Becky Shaw marks the Broadway debut of Gina Gionfriddo. Although Gionfriddo is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist (for Becky Shaw and Rapture, Blister, Burn), a Drama Desk nominee and Outer Critics Circle Award winner (also for Becky Shaw), and a successful television writer, it took more than two decades of writing professionally for one of her plays to hit Broadway. Her other plays include After Ashley which premiered at the Vineyard in 2004. Becky Shaw was first seen in New York at Second Stage off-Broadway in 2008. This production was directed by Peter DuBois and stared Thomas Sadoski, Kelly Bishop, Annie Parisse, Emily Bergl, and David Wilson Barnes in the tale of how unexpected baggage heavily complicates a blind date. The Broadway bow of the play 18 years later will be directed by Trip Cullman. 

Bug is one of the earliest works of the prominent playwright Tracy Letts. The play was first seen in New York in 2004 in a commercial off-Broadway run at the Barrow Street Theatre. This production, directed by Dexter Bullard, starred Reed Birney, Michael Shannon, Amy Landecker, Shannon Cochran, and Michael Cullen. Amanda Plummer withdrew from the production the day before its first preview. Bug followed Killer Joe, an earlier off-Broadway Letts success, in impressing New York audiences. While Letts had a prolific early career and has always been embraced by the Chicago theatre scene given his artistic home at Steppenwolf, his Broadway debut didn’t come until 2007’s August: Osage County, which won him the Pulitzer. Now that Bug is being seen on Broadway more than 20 years after its off-Broadway production, the immensely popular and acclaimed Carrie Coon, who is married to Letts, is taking on the lead role. Directed by David Cromer, this new production of Bug also stars Namir Smallwood, Randall Arney, Jennifer Engstrom, and Steven Key. These pieces that are already known to audiences from off-Broadway and regional productions before hitting Broadway are often billed as “cult classics”, and Bug is no exception. 

Marjorie Prime rounds out the trio of delayed Broadway bows for highly worthwhile plays this season. While Becky Shaw and Bug tackle romantic and sexual entanglements in various ways, Marjorie Prime is about memory and mortality. Unlike Becky Shaw and Bug which are helmed by different directors than their New York premieres, Marjorie Prime is again being directed by Anne Kauffman. Kauffman’s 2015 production of Marjorie Prime at Playwrights Horizons starred Lois Smith, Noah Bean, Stephen Root, and Lisa Emery. Starring June Squibb, Cynthia Nixon, Danny Burstein, and Christopher Lowell this time, the new Broadway production is currently playing at Second Stage’s Hayes Theatre. Much of the same design team who worked with Kauffman on the 2015 version has returned, so even with a completely different cast, this Marjorie Prime has close ties in vision to its New York premiere. Jordan Harrison, like Gina Gionfriddo, is making his Broadway debut as a playwright following years of high profile credits and awards, including in his case a Pulitzer nomination for Marjorie Prime. 

While Becky Shaw, Bug, and Marjorie Prime are far from the first shows to make the leap to Broadway years after an off-Broadway debut, they do mark a new tendency to mine the recent off-Broadway landscape for acclaimed plays that did not make the transfer to Broadway immediately but might now be ripe for production. Other notable plays that have followed this pattern include Driving Miss Daisy, Orphans, This Is Our Youth, and Three Days of Rain. 

Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry hit off-Broadway in 1987 before a Broadway debut 23 years later, in 2010. The piece had already won the Pulitzer by the time it premiered on Broadway, but was perhaps seen as too intimate of a show, with its small cast, for a Broadway production back in the 1980s. In that decade, when commercial off-Broadway was a more viable option for a new play, Driving Miss Daisy stuck with its origin spot and didn’t transfer. Orphans by Lyle Kessler had a commercial off-Broadway run in 1985 and eventually made it to Broadway in 2013. Some of this trend also has to do with the kinds of plays that star actors are attracted to; a proven entity with roles that provide great opportunities for actors is a slam dunk and some off-Broadway work fits this bill perfectly. Like the previous two plays, This Is Our Youth is also a three hander and the Kenneth Lonergan piece provided juicy roles to actors off-Broadway in 1996 and on Broadway in 2014. Three Days of Rain by Richard Greenberg similarly attracted actors off-Broadway in 1997 and on Broadway in 2006, marking Julia Roberts’ Broadway debut. 

While plays have had more frequent recent occurrences of this phenomenon, the trend has affected musicals historically as well. Putting It Together, the Sondheim revue premiered off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in 1993. Even though the Broadway premiere of the show was only six years later, it was a completely different production. Off-Broadway’s Putting It Together was directed by Julia McKenzie who also devised the show with Sondheim. It starred Julie Andrews, Stephen Collins, Christopher Durang, Michael Rupert, and Rachel York. The Broadway premiere in 1999 was directed by Eric Schaeffer and starred John Barrowman, Carol Burnett, George Hearn, Ruthie Henshall, and Bronson Pinchot, with Kathie Lee Gifford as Burnett’s alternate.

One can also count the a cappella musical In Transit, which similarly had off-Broadway and Broadway premieres six years apart, in two different productions. The 59E59 show in 2010 was directed by Joe Calarco and the Circle in the Square production in 2016 was directed by Kathleen Marshall. The cast lists and designers changed as well, marking each In Transit as its own creation. The historic a cappella musical had book, music, and lyrics by the four-person team of Kristen Anderson-Lopez, James-Allen Ford, Russ Kaplan, and Sara Wordsworth.

KPOP is a unique case. The celebration of Korean pop artists and their culture had its Ars Nova premiere in 2017 and Broadway bow in 2022. The two productions were two separate entities, with huge script and story changes, but the pandemic interruption also played such a large role in the show’s timeline and development in a way that was out of the creators’ hands. Teddy Bergman was at the helm of both versions of the show, with book by Jason Kim and music and lyrics by Helen Park and Max Vernon.  

And finally, the popular The Lightning Thief received a Broadway debut only five years after its off-Broadway premiere, but like the above musicals, did so with a different cast. After the musical became an unexpected runaway success following its Lortel Theatre production directed by Stephen Brackett, it embarked on two national tours and had an off-Broadway comeback before a run at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway. The show based on the Percy Jackson books has book by Joe Tracz and music and lyrics by Rob Rokicki. The 2019 Broadway production shared several cast members with the show’s 2017 off-Broadway revival, with only Kristin Stokes appearing in both the off-Broadway and Broadway premieres.